


Remember Her

by pullthewaterworks



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Modern AU, Multi, Skittery is kind of cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pullthewaterworks/pseuds/pullthewaterworks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skittery could remember the first time he saw her. She was odd, and he didn't know what exactly he ought to think about her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember Her

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the characterization in here is a bit rough, I know. I wrote this whole thing at midnight one night, and I figured I might as well post it. So yeah. It's gonna have some rough patches. That's about it, really. I mainly wanted more Skittery fan fiction to exist cause there's not enough in the world.

The first time Skittery saw her, he was picking up someone else for a date.

 

He’d asked out Elaine, a pretty blonde girl in his Psychology class, and unexpectedly, she’d said yes.

He stood outside of her apartment complex, staring up at the front door, wiping his sweating palms on his jeans, his anxiety threatening to get the best of him, and send him home before he’d even gotten started. 

“Planning on knocking?” 

Skittery jumped at the sound of the voice, his gaze flying towards the source—a girl with reddish-brown curls of hair, long and tangled around her shoulders, wearing a shirt that was too tight for her, shorts that were practically shredded, and scuffed, stained white converse low-tops. 

“Yeah. Of course I am.” He shot back shortly, squaring his shoulders and marching towards the door, determined to go though with it. 

“Good luck.” She called after him.

He froze, fist lifted to knock on the door.

“What do you mean?” He asked, a frown crossing his face.

“You’re here to take somebody on a date—Elaine, probably, she’s the only other girl who lives in the building.” The girl shrugged, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “You wouldn’t be so nervous about knocking if you weren’t going on a date, would you?” She reasoned, raising an eyebrow.

Skittery shrugged, turned, and knocked.

\---

After an awkward first ten minutes of their first date, Skittery and Elaine fell into conversation easier than either of them had anticipated, and, after five dates, she was his girlfriend.

Three months later, he sat on her couch with his arm draped around her, hardly believing his own good fortune, Elaine curled up next to him, her hand pressed to his chest, eyes fixed on the movie on the screen.

He was jarred out of his happy daze by a loud knock on the front door.  
Elaine smiled at him apologetically and paused the movie, slipping out from under his arm, and walking to open the door.

The door opened, and there stood the girl he’d met on his first night, picking up Elaine.

This time, however, her eyes were swollen from crying and she was barefoot. 

“Alice.” Elaine stared at the other girl, eyes wide.

“Sorry to interrupt.” Alice said shortly, her voice flat, indicating no emotions. 

If Skittery hadn’t been able to see how swollen-up her eyes were, he wouldn’t have been able to tell she’d been crying.

Elaine wordlessly stepped aside, gesturing her in the door.

Skittery excused himself and left, kissing Elaine goodbye on his way out.

\---

Two weeks later, Skittery asked Elaine why the girl—Alice, he remembered--had been crying, and why she’d come to Elaine.

Elaine shrugged, but Skittery knew that she simply wasn’t telling him.

He didn’t push the subject.

\---

At Prom, Junior year, two months after “the incident”, as Skittery called it, though it was hardly an incident, had occurred at Elaine’s, Skittery saw Alice again.

Elaine was breathtakingly beautiful that night, her hair curled into pristine ringlets, all pinned back, tumbling down her back in a waterfall-like fashion, dressed in a midnight blue dress that almost tripled her normal cleavage, and made Skittery think entirely unholy thoughts.

Skittery was, of course, in a tuxedo, as every boy was, rented from some relatively nice place in the mall that his mom had driven him to.

Alice showed up with Jack Kelly—the captain of the school soccer team, and one of Skittery’s good friends—but the two of them barely touched the whole night.

Skittery found out later that Jack had asked her as a favor to Elaine, and had ditched Alice later to hook up with Sarah Jacobs, a pretty girl whom Jack had been pining after since the beginning of Sophomore year.

Alice sat alone at their table after he left, picking at the hem of her far-too-short-for-Prom dress, and waited until Skittery and Elaine left, and hitched a ride in the backseat of Skittery’s car. 

\---

He saw her again over the summer, when he life-guarded at a public pool.

She was wearing a bikini with a top and bottom half of two different shades of orange.

She smiled at him as she walked past, and he smiled back, watching her until she disappeared from his line of sight.

\---

The next year, she came back with her hair chopped off at her shoulders.

She was in Skittery’s Honor’s English class, and sat in front of him, telling him with a secretive air that she’d been in all basic classes last year, and had been put in Honors by mistake.

She didn’t switch classes.

The lowest grade he ever saw her get in that class was a 93% on a paper that everyone else had utterly failed.

\---

He started talking to Alice during English class.

“I’m glad you’re talking to her.” Elaine commented brightly, one day during lunch, “She hasn’t got many friends in the Honors classes, besides me, so you talking to her is the best thing you could really do.”

Skittery didn’t ask her why she cared so much about Alice or her apparent lack of friends.

\---

During the final game of the soccer season, Skittery heard a whistle from the stands. 

He looked up, squinting against the beads of sweat that threatened to drip into his eyes.

Elaine was there—that wasn’t a surprise—and Alice sat beside her, fingers in her mouth, before she let out another loud whistle, Elaine doubled over in laughter at the mildly irritated look the few parents in the stands gave her.

Skittery let out a quiet huff of laughter and turned back to the game with a shake of his head.

After the game was won, Skittery jogged over to the stands and kissed Elaine, right there, in front of everyone, ignoring Bumlets and Kid Blink’s—a fellow defenseman and a midfielder, respectively—whistles.

Alice laughed and pushed her hair out of her face, frowning slightly as it continued to be pushed in her way by the wind.

Then Mush, one of the forwards, kissed her, seemingly out of nowhere.

\---

Alice had been talking to—and going on dates with—Mush for the majority of the summer, Skittery later found out from Elaine.

He’d never seen Alice smile quite as much as she did when she was with him.

\---

Skittery and Elaine went to Homecoming together, and had sex for the first time in Skittery’s bedroom later that night.

Jack got the balls to ask Sarah to the dance, and Sarah’s brother—and ever-cautious midfielder—David Jacobs finally attended a school dance with a girl who wore very thick glasses and had had braces until last summer. 

She was cute, Skittery supposed, if you liked bookish girls.

Alice and Mush skipped Homecoming altogether and went to a drive-in theater and watched a cheap horror movie.

\---

Alice and Mush were the oddest couple the school had ever seen.

There was Mush, loud and cheerful and naïve, bordering on slightly dim-witted. He was good-hearted and all, just not, as Skittery’s mom would say, “the sharpest tool in the shed”.

Alice, on the other hand, was quiet and didn’t smile much—well she hadn’t before she got together with Mush. It seemed like all that smiling was the main thing she did these days. Still, she was smart--quick on the uptake, clever with words, and excellent grades in her now all-Honors schedule. (Her counselor had switched her over the second he caught wind of her English grade.)

 

When she and Mush looked at each other though…well everyone could tell that they were in love, regardless of if they’d said the exact words to each other yet or not.

\---

First semester finals crept up seemingly out of nowhere, sending everyone into a whirlwind of mixed panic and last minute study sessions.

Skittery was prone to using study sessions with Elaine for basically everything under the sun except studying, so she’d laughingly banned him from study sessions with her until finals were over so that she could concentrate.

She suggested that she pair up with Alice instead, and he took her up on it, offering a study group to Alice one day after school.

She agreed eagerly.

“Mush is great,” She informed him cheerfully, “but if he asks me who the Hapsburgs were one more time I’ll lose it.”

She turned out to be magnificent at remembering dates, and he was good at catching dropped and added in commas, so they both did beautifully in History and English.

They struggled through math with as little beating-their-heads-on-the-table as was humanly possible, and did shockingly well in their respective science classes (Skittery took Chemistry, while Alice took Biology).

Skittery emerged from finals with six A’s and a B, and a much closer friendship with Alice.

\---

Winter break came as a welcome vacation from the school year, and Skittery spent much of his time at Elaine’s apartment.

They slept together for the second time, and Skittery, laid next to her languidly after, his face buried in the crook of her neck, feeling wholly comfortable and happy, and wishing that he could stay there forever.

They had a movie night with Mush, Alice, David, and his bookish now-girlfriend, whose name was Annie.

David and Annie fell asleep together in their shared armchair and Mush whispered jokes to Alice the whole time.

Skittery and Elaine held hands.

\---

Second semester started up sluggishly, dragging more than anything else.

Jack and Sarah got into a fight, broke up, and got back together, but other than that, nothing of any real substance happened.

Alice started waving to Skittery as she passed him in the halls, and after the third time, Skittery started waving back.

\---

When at last spring filtered in through the grayish mush and cloudy skies, Skittery was itching to go outdoors.

After his invitation to go on a hike was turned down four separate times by Elaine, Skittery asked Alice instead.

They walked through the forest by Skittery’s house, and got mud on their shoes.

Alice told him about her friendship with Elaine. 

They were close, Alice said, brought together by being the only two girls their age in their apartment building, but had been drifting lately, because of their respective boyfriends.

She also told him about her mom’s ex-boyfriend.

He’d been the reason that she’d been crying that night that was now so long ago. He’d been the one who abused her emotionally and made her feel worthless.

He was the reason why, sometimes, she still felt that way.

Skittery hugged her tightly, and she made him promise not to tell anyone.

Not even Mush.

He promised.

She had a spray of freckles across her nose, he noted, which he noticed only now, so close to her face.

\---

They all went to prom in a big group.

Skittery with Elaine, Mush with Alice, Jack with Sarah, David with Annie, and a couple of the other boys with their assorted dates.

This time, Alice’s dress was long and forest green and fit her perfectly.

This time she danced with Mush the whole night.

This time, Skittery didn’t pity her.

Elaine rested her head on Skittery’s shoulder, and her makeup stained the tux, and he had to spend two hours the next day trying to wash it out, but he didn’t mind.  
They got a hotel room and slept together for the third time.

\---

Elaine broke up with Skittery two days before finals started.

She was going to University of Chicago and wouldn’t have the time or energy to sustain a long-distance relationship, she told him apologetically.

Skittery felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

\---

At graduation, Skittery sat right next to Alice (both of their last names ended with a “F”) and she muttered comments to him for the majority of the presentation and he smiled for the first time since the breakup. 

Alice’s hair was curled that day. A world of difference from the tangles he’d seen when he first met her.

Her makeup covered her freckles.

He missed the freckles.

\---

On the second of July, Alice called Skittery.

She was crying.

She’d broken up with Mush, for many of the same reasons that Elaine had broken up with Skittery: Mush was going away to California for college on a soccer scholarship. Alice was staying in New York, going to NYU.

Skittery talked to her for two hours on the phone until her phone died at one AM, and she didn’t call back.

\---

On the fourth of July, Skittery called Alice.

He was drunk.

He told her that he wanted to kiss her, and she laughed at him for a good three minutes.

She came to his house an hour later, finding him sitting out on the roof, clutching a bottle of strawberry wine from his mother’s liquor cabinet.

She sat next to him and held his hand in silence as the fireworks blazed overhead.

\---

Skittery saw her again at his lifeguarding job.

She was with Mush.

He asked her about it later, and she shrugged and told him that they were just hanging out as friends.

He pretended that he hadn’t seen them kissing by the concession stand.

She wore teal bikini twith a matching top and bottom half this summer, and got a tan.

She shouted up cheerfully at Skittery, to where he sat on his lifeguard pedestal, while Mush stood behind her, arms around her waist, smiling absentmindedly, chin resting on her shoulder.

Skittery didn’t talk to Elaine for the entirety of the summer, and, inexplicably, felt tremendously jealous of Mush—perhaps for still having what Skittery no longer had with Elaine.

\---

Summer ended, and Mush went off to California.

Jack and Sarah lived out Jack’s dream of going to college in New Mexico, and David went to Columbia University and kept up a long distance relationship with Annie, who went to Florida.

Skittery went to Columbia University with David, but didn’t talk about it with anyone.

He felt almost ashamed to be going to an Ivy League school, when he’d worked no harder than many of his other friends. 

\---

The night before he left for college, Alice called him, crying again.

She and Mush had broken up—officially this time, she said.

Skittery walked to her apartment, talking with her on the phone the whole time. 

He ran into Elaine on the stairwell of the apartment building, and she eyed him curiously, and sent him a hesitant smile, which he returned before continuing up the stairs without looking back.

He sat beside Alice on her mother’s couch and they talked.

She told him about how her mother’s Ex-boyfriend, who’d been so awful to her was now on a court ordered restraining order, keeping him away from both her mother and her.

About how she and Elaine had had a fight—she wouldn’t say over what—and were no longer friends.

Skittery was surprised by how matter of fact she sounded.

She kept it together until Mush was brought up, and then she dissolved into tears, and he held her and let her tears soak through his shirt. 

He fell asleep sitting there, his arms around her, and woke up early the next morning, and felt as though his heart were being squeezed in a juicer when he looked down and saw her asleep, still curled up against him.

He left her apartment with a crick in his neck and a promise to visit her throughout the school year. They’d both be in New York after all—her at NYU, him at Columbia University.

\---

Skittery and David requested each other as roommates, and miraculously, their request was granted.

David was a neat freak and spent most of his time off with a Windex bottle and paper towels, cleaning every available surface.

Skittery was a neat freak too.

He spent a lot of time cleaning the bathroom floor. 

The two of them studied tirelessly and made it through first semester with flying colors.

Skittery didn’t visit Alice.

\---

A few days into second semester, Annie broke up with David.

David cried for what felt like hours after the breakup, and laid in bed for a full two days.

He stopped cleaning, and after a while, stopped getting up to shower or eat.

Skittery called Jack and Sarah after it persisted for a week, growing worried for his friend.

Jack came up to visit by himself, and Sarah stayed in New Mexico, giving Jack instructions to call her and tell her what was going on with her brother.

Jack stayed with Skittery and David for a week, and gradually, he and Skittery managed to coax David out of bed and into the kitchen.

David started eating consistently again, and Jack went back to New Mexico.

\---

Skittery and David finished out second semester strong, and headed home for summer vacation. 

Over summer vacation, Sarah discovered she was pregnant, and Skittery avoided Alice.

Alice got back together with Mush, and Skittery felt sick to his stomach.

\---

Everyone went back to college the following Fall—even Sarah, whose belly had only just begun to swell.

Alice and Mush broke up again, but Alice didn’t call Skittery this time.

This time, she showed up at his dorm, bad tempered and glaring, snapping at him when he asked her what was up. 

“We’re friends, Skitts. What kind of friend avoids the other one like that, huh?” She snarled.

She didn’t mention Mush the entire time, and she didn’t come inside the dorm.

 

\---

In October, David started seeing Erin, a blonde girl who had far more energy that Skittery had thought someone standing at about 5’0 could have.

David was utterly infatuated with her, and Skittery was glad that his friend was happy.

He wasn’t quite so glad about them using the dorm space to make out in while Skittery was trying to study.

 

\---

 

On Halloween, he gave up and went to go visit Alice.

He stood outside of her dorm room, palms sweating while he tired desperately to wipe them off on his blue sweatpants.

She opened the door hurriedly, shouting something over her shoulder at her roommate, and smacked straight into Skittery.  
She was wearing a purple NYU sweatshirt and bright pink shorts, her dark hair knotted up atop her head.

Her hair was the same length now as it had been when he met her.

She grinned at him faintly, not making any move to get away from him.

“Were you planning on knocking?” She quipped, raising an eyebrow.

Skittery could see the freckles sprayed out across her nose.

His breath felt like it was coming out in gasps, and his face felt too hot.

“Yeah, of course I was.” He mumbled dismissively, trying to play it off as though he’d not once considered turning tail and running away from her door.

Alice smiled and leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed him, and he kissed her back.


End file.
